WordPress.com experience update

Using Markdown in Ulyssesapp for writing drafts (synced across desktop and mobile apps) and then publishing directly to WordPress via the desktop app is brilliant. It’s made the process of writing so much easier and more enjoyable, than pasting into Tumblr, then fiddling with formatting, or having to touch a browser publishing interface at all. Just Publish, Immediately, Boom.

Discovering that URL redirects / automatic 301s were taken care of for me was a lovely surprise. It would have been nice to have known this before spending so long researching ways to make old Tumblr URLs redirect to their new WordPress slug format, but it’s a gift horse that I’m very happy with. Perhaps it was made possible because I used the WordPress.com importer to pull in all my old Tumblr content, but again, whatever it is is great. No dead links, full archive intact.

One downside that remains particularly disappointing is the inability to remove the little WordPress Sign in / Follow functionality in the bottom right corner of the page. It seems like such an odd thing to force onto paying users, and all visitors, especially when there’s already a WordPress advert in the footer that you can’t get rid of unless you pay for the Business plan. Apparently though, even with that plan you can’t remove the Sign in / Follow thing, which must really frustrate businesses that have their whole website on the service.

Also it’s a little frustrating that you have to have to pay all the way up to the Business plan in order to use Google Analytics. There’s something spiteful in that decision, to paywall something that’s so simple to add, that it leaves a bad taste.

There’s also a flash of unstyled text issue with my theme that’s annoying, but now I’m just getting picky, as on the whole, these issues are far outweighed by point 1 alone.

In short, for personal blogging, without the faff of running your own server, I highly recommend WordPress.com.